Resourcing Your Soul: Holding Grief with Strength and Grace
The weight of the world is enough to bring us to our knees.
Maybe that’s exactly where we’re meant to be.
Here we are. Sitting in our lives in this time of incredible change and increasing suffering on both a global and personal level. This maelstrom of crisis that we see happening in the world, both close at hand and far away is enough to bring one to their knees. The waves of grief at the suffering that I am witnessing certainly have been enough to bring me to my knees. Perhaps this is exactly where we need to be.
When the pain of the world reaches a breaking point, whether that is through our internal processes of wounding and healing, or in witnessing this great collapse that is far too painful to bear, we have two choices. We can close our eyes, push it away, numb out, and keep going. Creating a fog around our lives and blocking our essential truth speaking and deep feeling soul from expressing the the pain that we feel. Or we can courageously, even if we are terrified, open ourselves to the pain, be humbled, and find ourselves on our knees.
A Walk with Grief and Beauty
I walked on a recent morning in a park near my home where old cottonwoods stand tall with trunks 12 feet around, osprey, bald eagle, songbirds, and of course Canadian geese All claiming the sky with their wings, their bodies buoyed up by the winds, engaged in the simple work of living their lives. I was walking with a purpose. My heart beating fast and my arms swinging, walking to move through a swell of intensity, another tidal wave of grief coming up in my body and needing to be presenced.
I walked past children feeding pigeons and their parents laughing at their delight. Along a river that is lower than I have ever seen it, summers end and a less than stellar snowpack last year contributing to the receding waters, dry stone lining the banks. Even in this diminished state the river is a sanctuary for life, waters still green and swift, herons knee deep in their slow hunting dance.
I walked past people obviously on the margins of life, looking dazed and tired, waking up in the park after what I can only imagine was an uncomfortable night's sleep. Along the dock on the river a boat was pulled up, worn and dirty, filled to the brim with the debris of a life on the water. Many people who have lost their homes live on such boats on the Willamette now. A floating village of sorts, made up of folks who have nowhere else to go. And I walked past some tents, nestled along the trees at the bank of the river. Casting my eyes down and seeing three young and disheveled women, sitting outside their tent smoking heroin off of tinfoil at 8:00 AM.
The Impossible Question
How large do our hearts have to grow to be able to hold all of the pain of this world?
How can we be strong enough to stay present to this trouble, to not close our eyes and turn away, to be here, in this world as it is right now?
A Greater Power
In 12 step recovery we learn that we cannot heal our addictions on our own. We have to find a power greater than ourselves. I've spent enough time in 12 step rooms to know that there is wisdom in this teaching. As a small “I” Individual self we are not powerful enough to hold it all. We have to resource a greater form of support. That support can come from the collective around you, holding you up, singing your song back to you until you can sing it yourself. That power can come from a connection with spirit, with the land, with the forces that hold and guide our lives beyond our understanding.
This is the wisdom that I returned to again and again. When the pain is too large to bear-we have to grow larger.
These are the times when I remember - this is why I practice and teach soul work. To be deeply rooted into the web of life which is larger and stronger than I could ever be. When the pain of the world, and the pain of our own lives, is so immense that we fear that we will crumble, we must become willing to allow ourselves to be held by this greater force and power.
Teachers All Around Us
Look to the trees, standing tall under the fierce eye of the sun all summer. Standing tall in winter storms and endless days of cold rain. Reaching their roots down through the earth that is hard from drought, or cold from snow and ice. Brailing their root tips through the dark soil around rocks, they find their way no matter what period they keep standing. What do these tall standing ones have to tell us about finding the strength to stand in our own lives?
Have you stood before them, eyes turned upward to behold their branching glory, placed a hand on that rough-hewn trunk and asked them to teach you?
What of the river that never gives up... Whose waters curve along stone banks, to farmland with chemical runoff, through cities full of people too busy to stop and make an offering to the waters, through concrete dams impenetrable to the eye. The water keeps flowing, no matter what. Intent on following its original instructions to bring life to the world. What does the river have to teach us about continuing on when times are hard?
Have you placed your feet in river’s waters and asked to be shown how to keep going?
Still Standing
This is how we grow larger. By expanding ourselves out of the small “I “and into the wholeness of the world. By softening our edges and becoming part of the community of life again. Apprenticing ourselves to the wisdom of our elders not just in the human world, but in the more-than-human world that is always here waiting to teach us if we are willing to listen.
So here we are again. Knees on the ground. Humbled by the scale of pain we are witnessing. If we are fortunate, our knees will hit the ground in front of a tree. A tree that will be a teacher. A tree that will so generously remind us that we too are still standing, even if our shoulders are bent heavy with sorrow and worry, even if we don't know how.
Still standing.